Signs of a Degenerate World

"The world's gone mad," I said in shock.
I was too stunned to say anything, so I merely nodded mutely.
"I mean, how does one react when one comes face to face with tangible evidence of our society's steadily increasing corruption?"
I shook my head in bewilderment, still silent.
"This just cannot be happening. No, it isn't happening. I'm going to walk away and pretend this never happened, that I never came here, never witnessed this."
"This is a good plan," I finally managed to say, faintly.
Yet for all my good intentions, I still stood there, frozen in sick horror, staring up at that most innocuous of signs: The Whitcoulls' Top 100 Books.

...

Oh, Whitcoulls! How you have toyed with my emotions over the years! You lure me seductively into your well-appointed store, with stands of glorious books layed out in the most beautiful of logical arrangements. You entice me to pick up a book, new and glistening with promise, and then I drift, dream-like, up to your counter to pay an exorbitant amount of money for a book I read in less than a day. But do I begrudge you?

No. For you are Whitcoulls, provider of books, and I love you. You create a convenient place to meet people at the mall - for if they should happen to be late, who could become bored in your illustrious confines?

But today, I could not even bear to step across your threshold.

"They changed it," I said in shock. "The Top 100. It's changed."
"They change it every year," I pointed out. "They have a vote, and people decide which are their favourite books, and Whitcoulls turns it into a lucrative advertising campaign. You couldn't expect it to remain the same forever."
"But look," I whispered. "Look at which book has the number one spot."
I looked. "It's some sort of series... The Millenium trilogy, by some man I've never even heard of..."
"And you know what that means," I said.
"The Lord of the Rings," I replied in rising horror. "It isn't number one."
"Exactly," I hissed.
"Oh - but - but this must simply be one of those fleeting times when pop literature briefly captivates the minds of the indoctrinated masses, and ends up momemtarily besting the greatest of literary classics. Like when The Da Vinci Code inexplicably ended up number one, with The Lord of the Rings coming in second. You were horrified. And the following year The Da Vinci Code had returned to its rightful place of 21st, and Tolkien once more reigned triumphant. You'll see. The Lord of the Rings will still be quite high up there."
With beating heart my eyes turned to the second spot on the list. And it was then, just then, that I realised the depths our modern world had sunken to.

Twilight held second place.

The pounding of my heart was reminiscent of the drums echoing through Moria - doom, doom went the drums in the deep.

My eyes frantically flicked to third place.

The Time Traveller's wife.

Doom. Doom.

Fourth place.

My Sister's Keeper.

Doom. Doom.

Fifth Place.

Cross Stitch - previously unheard of, and from this point onwards scorned forever more.

Doom. Doom.

At last my eyes beheld the sight they longed to see - The Lord of the Rings, resplendant in the red cover identical to the one it was originally published in so many years ago, sitting morosely at the end of the shelf, unheeded and unwanted, in sixth place.

"The world's gone mad," I whispered.

Shock held me immobile. I was faced with the complete restructuring of my world. How was I supposed to think, to act, to speak, when my fellow man regarded the greatest work of fiction ever written to be lesser than the meanest trashy pulp novel?

Was I to conform to the world's expectations and treat The Lord of the Rings with scorn and derision?

Was my copy of The Lord of the Rings, illustrated by Alan Lee and celebrating the hundredth birthday of the Great Professor himself, to lose its spot of reverence upon my bookshelf?

No. Never, and certainly not today.

I shook the dust of Whitcoulls from my feet and stormed off. I wished to go to a place where great literature was treated appropriately. Stupidly, I went to the theatre and watched The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

I came home and I wept.

Then I burned my Twilight novels.